11TH HOUR, THE - DVD review

Think what you will about Al Gore, he has undoubtedly done more to raise the public's consciousness about global warming than any person in the world. His ongoing lectures and his 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth" have not only enlightened the public, they have helped spawn a slew of documentaries on the subject, one of which is the theatrical release under consideration here, 2007's "The 11th Hour." The big differences are that while Gore's film won an Oscar for best documentary of the year and took in over $23,000,000 at the box office, "The 11th Hour" ran only in limited release in America and eventually took in less than $1,000,000. Are box-office numbers a fair judge of film quality? Hardly. But in this case, one can make the argument that audiences may have perceived "The 11th Hour" as merely "more of the same." And, actually, they wouldn't be far off.

Leonardo DiCaprio co-produced and narrates the film, which attempts to show that people are opportunistic and greedy and as a result are destroying the planet. No argument from me, but as you might expect, there is no argument from the other side, either. The movie suggests that people themselves are to blame for the mess we're in due to their unbridled consumerism, for their wanting everything now and being willing to put up with anything to get it. More important, it accuses big industry of taking advantage of a gullible public and big government of being controlled by big industry. Needless to say, the filmmakers did not ask corporate or elected leaders to offer their side of the story. Nobody said documentaries had to be fair or unbiased. They have a point to make, and they make it.

The movie's introductory sequence pretty much sets the stage for what's to come, juxtaposing images of pristine nature with natural disasters and industrial and commercial pollution. You know from the start it's going to be a grim road ahead...for the planet and for the viewer. Then, when you see so much destruction of the Earth in scene after scene, you wonder if the film isn't simply piling on, even when you agree wholeheartedly with everything it's saying.

Attempting to go beyond what Al Gore did in his film, "The 11th Hour" divides its subject matter into three distinct segments: An outline of the problem of global warming, an explanation of the causes for global warming, and a set of proposed solutions for global warming. The film itself alternates shots of hurricanes, droughts, melting ice caps, and the like with comments from noted scientists, environmentalists, journalists, authors, and observers on the subject. Even Mikhail Gorbachev gets his say.

Among the various tidbits of information and opinion I thought interesting were the following:

Temperatures are shifting, on average getting higher than they've ever been in history.

We're the only animal that can look ahead to our future and purposely change it.

The world's population is growing exponentially. For instance, there are twice as many people on the Earth today as there were in John F. Kennedy's day.

We can no longer live only on the energy of the sun; we now rely on nonrenewable fossil fuels, and there are too many of us using too many resources too fast.

Oil now subsidizes our lives. We depend upon it, and it's coming to haunt us.

"As we destroy nature, we will be destroyed in the process. There is no escaping that conclusion."

But the overriding question the movie asks, the one that overshadows everything else, is not whether global warming is happening--we take that pretty much for granted--but whether Man is the cause of it. Yet at least one politician, obviously representing the interests of big business, calls Man-made global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." That's about the closest the film gets to presenting a counterargument, but the filmmakers clearly included it to ridicule the politician in question.

The film goes on to say that what with our burning oil for energy in every-increasing quantities, our cutting down rain forests like never before, and the recession of the polar ice caps, we're heading for disaster. We're losing control of our climate.

Yes, say the filmmakers, there is an absolute consensus in the scientific community that the Earth is warming more than ever in history and that Man is mainly responsible for it. It's only the big corporate interests and their supporters in Congress who disagree. Corporations and the fossil-fuel industry basically run the world, the movie claims, so governments fail to respond to the crisis.

All fair and valid, if not exactly evenhanded. Yet "The 11th Hour" feels like something we've all seen and heard before. It's too much like a documentary from the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel, the Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, or PBS. The movie and its message, no matter how one-sided, are important; but it's all so familiar and all so grim, with the feeling throughout that we're being lectured to, that it's no wonder the film attracted so small an audience.

Still, there is a place for movies like this. It seems ironic that the single most-disastrous prospect facing the world, the one that virtually everyone is aware of and that could eventually kill us all, is the one that ranks lowest among people's priorities when pollsters ask them to list the five or six biggest problems facing them. Polls show that concerns with the economy, war, crime, and education are more important to people than global warming, which, after all, doesn't affect many of us in the here and now.

A closing comment quotes Deepak Chopra, saying "People are really doing the best they can, given their level of awareness." The film, therefore, attempts to raise our awareness of the global-warming problem and the possible solutions to it. And one final line struck me: "The Earth has all the time in the world. We don't."

Video:
Warner Bros. present the film in a 1.78:1 widescreen anamorphic widescreen ratio and a video quality that varies from scene to scene. The movie is an amalgam of different film footage, so some parts of it look better than others. The interviews almost all look better than most of the location shots, for example. The result is that much of the film appears merely ordinary at best. When it's good, it's quite good, and when it's not, it looks fuzzy, blurred, and grainy. What we've got is generally clean documentary footage, though, which is exactly what we might expect from such a film.

Audio:
Although the audio engineers processed the soundtrack in Dolby Digital 5.1, there isn't really much beyond 2.0 in most instances. The film begins with a loud, thumping bass line, which is quite dramatic and helps set a tone, but this is obviously not a movie that emphasizes strong sonic characteristics. It's a movie about ideas; therefore, it needs to project a clear, natural midrange for dialogue and narration, which it does comfortably. Behind the voices, there is often a musical background, well spread out amongst the front speakers but doing very little business in the rear.

Extras:
The disc's primary bonus is a series of featurettes on possible solutions to global warming, lasting altogether about ninety minutes. Many of the same people who participated in the feature film plus a few others talk to us further about what we can do to help deal with the problem. The segments cover most aspects of the issue: "Nature's Operating Instructions and Solutions," "Solutions We have Right Now," "Wonder of the World," "Our Reactions in the Face of Environmental Collapse," and "Religious Perspectives."

The extras conclude with seventeen scene selections but no chapter insert or chapter listing anywhere; English as the only spoken language; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. The disc case reads "packaging made with 100%-certified renewable resources." I think that means something like cardboard, which is what it seems to be, so the studio is doing its part to fight global warming, too, in its own small way.

Parting Shots:
As I've indicated, "The 11th Hour" has its heart in the right place but may be preaching to the choir. Most anyone interested in sitting through the ninety-two minute presentation will surely already know and believe in almost everything the movie has to offer. The question is how to grab those people who don't already understand the magnitude of the problem, and it's here that "The 11th Hour" finds tough sledding. The film offers up its subject matter in too dry and too grim a manner, mostly talk, and talk of dire doom and gloom at that. The initiate might find Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" more compelling, and the true believer might need something more profound than "The 11th Hour" provides.

For additional information on the consequences of global warming, the film suggests you go to 11thhourfilm.com, a Web site devoted to the subject.